


Transplantation

by LiberaMeLuminis



Category: Neon Genesis Evangelion
Genre: F/M, Ironic Flower Language is still Flower Language, M/M, Modified Hanahaki Disease, flower shop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-17
Updated: 2017-05-17
Packaged: 2018-11-01 23:45:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10932504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LiberaMeLuminis/pseuds/LiberaMeLuminis
Summary: Shinji requests a bouquet for his late mother's birthday. Kaworu, unfortunately, is a romanticist.





	Transplantation

**Author's Note:**

> I like Hanahaki, but I don't like Hanahaki fics, and that's basically it. This was really impulsive (aka if I messed up on grammar, then whoops)

It’s always nice, seeing Shinji Ikari at his workplace, his face framed by flowers and the blooming rays of sunshine. He’s shuffling his feet, and wringing his hands, and his face is scrunched up into something striking the line of _ugly-cute_ so precisely that Kaworu Nagisa does not actually hear what he says, and does not realize this until that expression becomes one of self-blaming regret.

“Ah – Shinji, could you repeat that?” In an afterthought, he reluctantly raises his hand to his face, and starts scratching his cheek, as if out of bashfulness.

Shinji’s nails have started digging into his fingers. “A bouquet, for my mom. Uh – my mother’s birthday. Kind of.”

“You have a mother?” It’s strange. Kaworu had never thought of that before – the idea of Shinji as a product of two other people. He seemed a bit closed-off about it, for the longest time – and when he finally spoke up, Kaworu hadn’t been listening.

At the very least, Shinji never seems to show any frustration, now, and in the past. Just, at this moment, a smidgeon of discomfort. A speck. Barely there at all. “Kaworu,” he starts, before his voice fades. “Well,” he tries again. “I mean to say,” he begins, as Kaworu looks at him expectantly, with wide eyes, “my mother’s dead.”

Kaworu mulls over this, for a second. “I’m sorry for your loss,” is the first thing that comes to mind, and so he says that. In reply, Shinji, filled with nervous energy, assures him that his mother died when he was a toddler, that he barely remembers her; but all Kaworu can think of is how Shinji came out of her. He feels as though he should thank her in some way, on behalf of the rest of the world.

 _It’s not enough_ , he decides, resolutely. In his mind, he is already looking back through the previous orders of the last six months – all of them either responses to a confession, or a gift for their partner, hearts and candies and Valentine’s sap pouring out of each one. Nothing to do with business, just fanciful appeals to emotion. A bouquet from Shinji to Shinji’s mother – his _dead_ mother, who had made half of Shinji himself. _And he entrusted me._

He decides to furrow his brows, and twist his mouth, the gears turning in his head. He hands over the ordering form and a pen, and at the same time, asks, “What’s her name?”

“It’s Yui,” Shinji exclaims, after overcoming the sudden shock, and thinks – in a moment of genius – to write it down on the form. “Ikari’s the same as mine. It’s, uh, her maiden name.” Apparently deciding that he had already revealed enough, and that adding more couldn’t hurt, “Father took on her name.”

“She must have been nice,” and Shinji nods. “Do you have any pictures of her?”

He doesn’t nod this time, and when he responds, his voice is lower than before. “I… might. I’ll send one to you, if I find any.” Worriedly tugging at his jacket, he pulls out his phone, and, before doing anything with it, apparently thinks better of it, and puts it away, though his hands stay within his pockets. “Um, what’s the price?”

“I’ll do it for free,” Kaworu grins.

Shinji smiles back, and Kaworu indulges in imagining that smile appear again, when everything’s said and done. “Thanks – to be honest,” his hands come out into the open, again, “I was counting on that.”

“It’s really nothing,” he says, looking over the form. “Anything for a friend.”

 

\---

_Wood Sorrel – Maternity_

_Sage – Longevity_

_Lilac – Memory_

\---

 

Yui Ikari’s picture glows, on account of his phone’s backlight, but Kaworu likes to think it’s also because of her beauty. She isn’t a homely woman – doesn’t conjure up nostalgic imagines of pastoral warmth – rather, her smile comes off as clinical, yet genuine, her hair is perfectly tousled, but not purposefully, and her eyes need not glimmer with amusement, because the sun already handles that fine enough.

To love someone else – _it can’t be that difficult_.

Hanahaki Disease: a strange affliction, its science mired in misinformation and contradictions, which causes those suffering from unrequited love to give their emotions visible form. Flowers, which devour the food one eats, the water one drinks, that, at first, provide an illusion of self-sufficiency, before creeping throughout one’s body, blocking the airways that they earlier filled.

Kaworu shuts close the poetry book. It sends up pocket-sized plumes of dust. He’s always been attracted to such things, like the strength of human will – stubbornness – and the insatiable desire to capture it through art – insanity. But nobody went _far_ enough. Humans were almost unfathomably resourceful, but sometimes, they took their own biology for granted.

The poetry book lies on top of an open botany encyclopedia, a compendium of information – the months that a flower would bloom, the amount of rainfall required to bring it there, the specific areas on the map with weather merciful enough to grant prospective planters their beginner’s luck, heaps upon heaps of knowledge and wisdom that stand the test of time; and, also, squeezed in at the corner of each yellowed page, the meaning assigned to each flower, designated through deigned decades of wishy-washy studies and idealistic pseudoscience.

Kaworu thinks it’s wonderful.

He flips through the book, eyes trained on that single corner, as words and meanings fly by. Every once in a while, he stops, and affixes a neon-colored post-it note on a page, and when he’s done, there are a total of three sticking out. Wood Sorrel, Sage, and Lilac. _Surely_ , he assures himself, whilst taking out a ballpoint pen and a composition notebook, _love for a dead person would be unrequited_.

The first streak of black stands out, thick and visceral and heavy and deep, against the creamy paper. He rubs his finger over the mark, and it, having dried quickly, does not smudge on either surface. And so he continues.

 _I love Yui Ikari_ , Kaworu writes, before pausing, in thought. _I love Yui Ikari_ , he writes, four more times, before moving on to just writing her name, with sweet, bubbly characters, and then sweeping, elegant ones; strokes that curled across the page, dipping and weaving and dancing.

He keeps at it for well over half an hour, until he starts to feel something shift, inside him – he can’t exactly place where, but it’s there, it’s begun. “All for Shinji,” he says to himself, thinking of the compost bin in the back of the flower shop, and removing ten tea bags from a galloon jug of water, before scraping off the excess into a cup, to eat. His flowers will grow to be healthy and strong, they will be beautiful. _Just like Yui Ikari._

 

\---

Carolina Lilac – _Disappointment_

Oleander - _Beware_

Rosebay Rhododendron - _Danger_

\---

 

Kaworu’s hands are wrapped around a stalk of Carolina Lilac, when Asuka Langley Soryu enters the apartment, previously unannounced before announcing herself with a “What the fuck are you doing?”

She gapes, almost at a loss for words, as Kaworu pulls the flowers out of his mouth. His palms are grating off the petals, and they fall to the floor in flurries, while the stem hangs, several meters long, like a demented green apple tongue. It’s as if it’s a magic trick – and sure, Kaworu’s survived weird things before, but nothing quite like _this_. Lilacs are supposed to be lilac-colored, not _red_.

It’s kind of disgusting, but she can’t tear her eyes away.

The green has faded to a derelict brown. Kaworu starts poking two fingers down his throat – Asuka cringes – and wrenching the roots from its walls. They’re stringy, and wet, and _it isn’t just disgusting_ , Asuka thinks, half-jokingly, _I feel violated_.

“Did you catch Hanahaki?” He at least has the decency to wipe his mouth with a napkin, and after confirming Asuka’s theory, starts collecting the flowers off the floor. “You’re disgusting,” she remarks, blandly, because there’s really nothing more to be said.

“It’s for Shinji,” Kaworu supplies, his voice hoarse and scratchy. It’s never sounded like that before, because he’s never been sick, and while he finds his own voice being foreign to him a fascinating conundrum, he doesn’t think he’ll like living with it.

“I should’ve known,” her eyes flit around the room, spotting a bucket in the corner that would be nondescript if it were not for the fact that it _reeked_ , “that you’d catch Hanahaki for idiot Ikari.”

He wrings his hands, before noticing something forming underneath his fingernail – when he plucks it out, it’s an Oleander petal, pink and pretty. “I don’t think Shinji’s mom is an idiot,” he draws out, slowly, just to let the words sink in.

The bucket is filled with oxidizing apple cores. “Seriously?” Asuka wouldn’t touch them with a ten-foot flagpole. “She’s dead. And probably over twice your age. And – well.” Kaworu can be really empty-headed, sometimes.

“Shinji asked me,” he explains, while cutting the lilac into smaller pieces, “to arrange a bouquet for his mother’s birthday.” The scissors struggle through ninety percent of the stalk, before slicing clean through the rest. “I can’t give her a bundle of regular flowers – those are as good as an empty vase.”

Asuka murmurs, “This is a bad idea,” just as Kaworu hunches over, the scissors slipping out of his fingers, and starts coughing up whole entire flower heads. They’re as white as his hair, and maybe even prettier, given how scraggily it is at the moment. She pats him on the back, hitting harder than necessary, to help him through it. Kaworu, useless as he is, flips through his stupidly big flower book, until he reaches the right page. _Rosebay Rhododendrons_ , Asuka reads. His shaking fingers are tapping against a reddish box of text. “Danger,” she recites out-loud. “Geez, even the flowers agree with me.”

“Love is a battlefield.” He’s emitting an unfair air of serenity. “And you always say I should take my job more seriously.”

“Your seriously­-faggy job,” Asuka retorts. It feels kind of bad, insulting him instead of saying anything meaningful, but it’s her instinctual response. “There’s lines you shouldn’t cross,” she tries to explain, but gives up with the rest of her argument, knowing he isn’t having any of it. Kaworu is really empty-headed.

His hands are gently, tenderly cupping the flower heads – he smoothes over the petals with his soft fingers. “I can finally do something with myself.”

Asuka repeats, “This is a bad idea,” but it doesn’t reach his ears, so she takes to glaring at the flowers – maybe if she glares hard enough, they’ll wilt.

“This isn’t enough to pay him back for all he’s done –“

“What _has_ he done?”

“-but I can’t just-“

“Half-ass it?”

“Yes.” He begins to place the flower pieces into a vacant shoebox. “I mean, when has Shinji ever ‘half-assed’ anything?”

Her nose wrinkles, and she’s looking all kinds of bewildered, befuddled, bemused. “Are we talking about the same person?” It’s worth a shot.

Kaworu pokes and prods at the petals with his pointer finger. They’re damp, with phlegm. “Humans have multi-faceted personalities.” The words come out patiently, and she wants to scowl. “Say, Asuka?” Said person is confronted by her roommate’s creepy, crimson eyes. She scowls. “Did you ever know Shinji’s mother? Yui Ikari,” he opens his notebook, and underlines one printing of her name, “spelled like that.”

Asuka crosses her arms, and in a brusque tone, repeats, “She’s dead.” Those creepy eyes blink owlishly back at her. “I mean – she died when he was four. When _I_ was four.” _Or three_ , but she doesn’t want to overcomplicate things for his shallow, stupid brain.

He isn’t appeased, not in the slightest.

“She was messed up in the head.” Granted, she’s exaggerating things, but it’s a longtime vendetta. “Kind of like you.”

“She’d do anything for Shinji then?” It’s taken a bit of time, but right now it’s not just his eyes that are freaking Asuka out.

Asuka doesn’t want to admit that she doesn’t know, that whatever Shinji’s mom did is a complete mess that would take a lot more than a family therapist to fix. “Sure,” she says, then gets a good, long look at the opened notebook, and decides to tack on a “You’re really fucked up,” for good measure.

When Kaworu lapses into a silent period of great introspection, as if legitimately pondering over whether he is, as Asuka said, “really fucked up,” she takes it as her cue to leave.

 

\---

Rye Grass – _Interchangeable_

Dried Flax – _Utility_

Heath – _Solitude_

\---

 

There isn’t a moment of peace to be found.

His stomach is churning. It’s not like he’s _about_ to throw up, but he wouldn’t be inclined to _not_ throw up, if the flowers forced his hand. There’s a widening, gaping emptiness, shaking him to the core, as he thinks of Asuka being woken up by his retches.

He doesn’t really need to think, because his ears pick up a limp “Goddammit,” through the walls, and a thump as Asuka weakly kicks her bedframe in an act of retribution.

By now, the apple cores don’t even taste like anything. Then again, he’s never tasted much of anything to begin with. It’s always been strange to him, how food dictates quality of life for people like Touji. He’s entertained the idea, but nonetheless, is not influenced by it, and so even though his stomach is churning, and even though certainly, he’d prefer whole apples, red and white and crisp, it doesn’t really matter.

 _It’s only the second night_ , he thinks, in silent awe.

Whenever he blinks, it feels like something is pressing up against his eyeball – something that’s stuck on the inner side. It’s almost comforting, in a way, knowing something is always there, that he actually has something inside him.

The carpet is rough under his bare feet, but suddenly, it’s not all that’s there. He grabs his desk lamp by its neck, flooding the dark underbelly of his desk with light, and spots nothing, even as he drags his feet to the side, to get a good look at what’s under them.

It’s still _there_.

Setting the lamp down, he pulls up his left foot, resting his crus on his opposite thigh, and peers at the bottom of it. It looks to be a fungal infection – sickly and repulsive, green to an almost comical degree – but before he begins to wonder where he could have ever caught such a nasty thing, he realizes it’s just rye grass that’s growing out between his toes. Hanahaki operated in weird ways.

He’s been making paper chains of him and Yui Ikari holding hands. They stretch hundreds of persons long, and he’s thinking of hanging them up against the window, to further cement it as a DIY decorating project. The scissors were able to cut cleanly through several sheets of paper at once, so he grips them firmly, bundling up the grass into one compact spear, and slices through it.

When he reaches up to brush his hair out of his eyes, large clumps of dandruff sprinkle down. He picks one out of his hair, and inspects it thoroughly, identifying it as dried flax. It’s a sort of dirtied yellow that he doesn’t think he quite likes. As far as flowers go, there are much better ones, but beggars can’t be choosers. If his memory serves correctly, as it often does, the floor mop is resting on-top of the cupboard.

The rye grass roots are still imbedded within him, though, so he thinks better of it for the nine bundles left, instead ripping them out with great effort, leaving his skin flaking and bleeding. He’ll have to wait until the last patch grows out, until he can remove it.

It’s all such a hassle, one might think. Kaworu simply tucks the symptoms into the box with the rest of them, before realizing that the flowers behind his eyes have apparently decided to start pushing out from underneath his eyelids. The heath peppers his vision, purple and blotchy and blocking him from clear sight of the little white silhouettes, caricatures of people waving at him from his desk.

 

\---

Amaranthus – _Hopeless, Heartless_

Foxglove – _Insincerity, A Wish_

Cardamine – _Paternal Error_

\---

 

“It isn’t enough.” Kaworu half-heartedly shoves the second box, stuffed with Amaranthus and Foxglove, next to the first. “Yui Ikari deserves more than this.”

Asuka regards him with what is ostensibly cool, collected air, as she takes out a large chunk of apple with her teeth. Inside, she is understandably bewildered. The paper chains – the ones not hung up, that is – are strewn across the floor. and while she would like to step on them, grind the little people’s faceless heads into the ground, she doesn’t really want to see what Kaworu would do.

The bucket is already halfway full. She can’t believe she’s doing this. “Maybe you’re going about this the wrong way.” There’s a whole other plastic bag full of apples, and it’s hard not to gag at the sight. “You’re too caught up with Yui.” At least Kaworu went out of his way to buy a wide variety.

The core lands perfectly when she tosses them in with the rest of them, but in this atmosphere, she can hardly celebrate her victory.

“Right,” Kaworu admits. “Right, I should have asked Shinji for information about her mother.” His nose scrunches up. “That sort of maternal connection is what I need.”

The image is stuck in her mind, now, of Kaworu fawning over Shinji’s wrinkly, old grandmamma. It’s a riot. She would have gray hair, just like Kaworu, and his stupidly pale, sickly skin would also match with her leathery, sagging rolls of rind and fat. Her response comes out absurdly fast, before she can even think. “Don’t you dare fucking do that!” Asuka wants to die. If she downed that entire bucket of apple cores, maybe she would.

“Are you sure I shouldn’t?” _He’s having a goddamn crisis over it_. “I mean –“ his pen taps, irritatingly, “– it would be interesting, to see if I could become attracted to her. I still want Wood Sorrel.” He simpers. “I was joking,” but Asuka doesn’t believe it. “I don’t have a picture of her anyway.”

“Maybe you should try her husband instead,” Asuka remarks, snide, before relapsing into horrified shock.

Kaworu himself fares no better. “You can do that?” he asks, eyes wide. “I’ve never thought about it like that before. This puts a lot of things into perspective.”

He starts rummaging through his desk, and she watches in painful regret. “Who the hell raised you?” The quip does not quell her oncoming migraine. Kaworu pushes a black and white photo into her face, and she tries not to distract herself. “And more importantly, you can’t fall in love with Shinji’s dad-“ She blinks. “Is this your extended family or something?”

Much to her chagrin, Kaworu shakes his head. “They’re all my brothers. It never occurred to me that relationships could work like that.”

“Yeah, you’re a real numbskull.” It’s a lot to take in. The fifteen people in the photo look so wildly different.

“My skull’s survived through a lot,” Kaworu says, wistfully. She doesn’t have the patience to deal with it. “Shinji’s father is still alive, right? Do you know anything about him?”

Asuka starts subconsciously wanting to lace her hands together. “He’s even worse than Shinji.”

He nods in approval. “It’s a hard standard to live up to. All I know is that he changed his last name for Yui.” A dreamy sigh. “It must be true love. I wish I would capture that feeling. I do understand it, though.” A smile. “Ikari’s a nice name.”

It gives her pause. “He’s mental.”

He nods some more, eyes closed. “Alright.”

“How does this work, anyway?” Rightfully incredulous. Kaworu gives it a moment of thought.

“I think,” he begins, “it’s an obsession. ‘Your mind makes it real.’ Something…” he grasps for words, “something like that. I don’t have a picture of Shinji’s father, so this may be difficult.”

If she ever sees another apple, it’ll be too early. “You don’t want to fall in love with him.” _How did it come to this?_ “He only meets up with Shinji on Yui’s birthday. It’s messed up.”

Kaworu regards this new information with a simmering sort of emotion, that starts from his fingers and moves up in quiet tremors. He decisively clenches his hands into fists, in an affected anger.

“I see what you mean,” he wants to say, but before that, his palm shoots up to his mouth, as a truly wretched pain jolts through his chest, unbearable, intolerable, like nothing he’s ever felt before. His digits crack and claw down his face, as his head tips back, his jaw snaps open, and a green flurry of flora sprouts from his gaping maw. It’s not raggedy, doesn’t look like it’s been through a summer storm, but flourishes, beautiful and horrifying, unfurling across the room till it’s bigger than the person it’s coming from, as if Kaworu himself had been turned inside out, his skin and hair budding into white Cardamine, his eyes spearing upwards, into a red-spiked flower that towered above the rest.

Amongst all the chaos, Kaworu’s arm struggles to incline upwards, tugging against the tight hold of the plants. He points to a pair of scissors on his desk, but Asuka is already one step ahead, hacking through the supposed jungle.

 

\---

(withered) White Rose – _Transient Impressions_

Red Columbine – _Anxious and Trembling_

Melianthus – _Love, secret and sweet_

\---

 

 _‘I don’t understand_ ,’ is what his cousin sends back, when he asks about love, and fathers, and mothers, and funerals, and birthdays, and all those little things that don’t make any sense. _I don’t understand either_ , he wants to type back, _that’s why I’m asking you_ , but he doesn’t really want to bother her any more than he already has. If anything, she’s even worse with these little things than he is, so it was a lost cause to begin with.

He wants to rip out his hair in sheer frustration, but every time he tries, his hands pull on split ends made of loose, withered, white roses, tired and growing old – and _am I growing old? Is this my life now? Am I stuck this way forever_? The petals of Red Columbine curl off his back, like great goblets of sweat, stewing in their fervor and heat and confusion. Yes, out of all the emotions there are, Kaworu is wholeheartedly, undeniably, irrevocably confused.

Rei is often confused, but she always takes it in stride – doesn’t necessarily pretend that she _isn’t_ , just doesn’t realize that she _is_. Regards lost information with the same kind of apathy she gives to glurge, and most of everything else.

It doesn’t bother Kaworu – or rather, it didn’t. Something about this bouquet plan must have ruined him, tweaked something in his brain to make it something it’s not, because it feels like there’s liquid inside of him, like lava, or stomach acid, and it feels like it’s going to bubble up, and froth, and spill over, turning him inside out into an eclectic monster. He’s never been so aware of it. He doesn’t think he ever could have been, in the past.

So he leaves it at that. Rei won’t take it to heart, because she doesn’t take most things to heart.

His room is all disorganized, chaotic, used and abused. It’s almost impossible to see the floor, what with all the disheveled leaves and such. There is only one center, one item of stability – the Melianthus flower, which stands proudly, despite the lack of support, nearly touching the ceiling, but never nudging it.

The shoeboxes and buckets are overturned. The flower encyclopedia is torn to shreds. He can replace it someday. In between its spikes, the Melianthus holds out its own page – from a distance, Kaworu squints at the little yellow box, then thinks of who he’s doing this all for, and says, out-loud, “Oh.”


End file.
